Field Survey Considering Distribution of Fire Location Part 1 Survey Summary and Results

The revised Building Standards Law in Japan (2002) introduced four performance verification protocols. One of the verifications for fire resistance performance was standardized by anticipating "uniformly distributed fire" and "localized fire" in terms of the design fire source. To date, much research has been conducted with respect to the flammable materials in order to incorporate this aspect into the fire safety design, but most of the research was mainly focused on the weight of the flammable material (e.g. fire load). The weight of the flammable material is a very important factor for calculating the burning duration under the assumption of a "uniformly-distributed fire". On the other hand, for the assumption used for the "localized fire" that does not induce flashover, it is necessary to understand the layout of the flammable materials in addition to the weight and to identify the fire source whose burning area is locally confinable in the design. With this background, and taking into account a past survey on fire load, a survey was conducted in order to determine the actual layout condition of the flammable materials in a room that could be presumed in the context of a "localized fire" that does not induce flashover.